A five-part series on my supernatural encounters. I don’t claim to believe in the supernatural, though I will tell you that everything I’ve written about here is an actual personal experience. Published in Roads and Kingdoms.

A man buys a mail-order-bride from the Philippines. He thinks he’s getting a subservient wife. He thought wrong. This story is temporarily on the site because students have been looking for it. It will be removed when it comes out in the second fiction collection.

“Some use demons to take revenge on their enemies. Others use them to acquire wealth and power in the mortal realm, while others use them for more mundane tasks, such as gardening. Whatever your reasons, we salute you and wish you well.”

The Bridge

A podcast of an abridged version of “The Bridge” read by Nikki Alfar on Pakinggan Pilipinas, a podcast site for Filipino stories.

I could feel the blood drain from my face, my body begin to shake. There was no mistaking that voice. I had been hearing it for twenty-six years of my life.

“Daddy?” I whispered.

But he was gone, the line dead.

I slumped in my seat, almost dropping the phone when I set it on my desk. That was my father. Of that I was sure. It couldn’t have been anyone else. It all would have made sense, except that he had died in front of his family two years ago in the ICU of the Cardinal Santos General Hospital.

“Daddy” was published as “Lao Peh” inA Hoard of Thunder: Philippine Short Stories in English 1990-2008
Volume II 2001-2008Gemino H. Abad; UP Press, 2013

The Child Abandoned

THEY SAY THAT A PERSON knows that she’s reached Quiapo by the way it smells. My grandmother—my Lola—described the scent as tentative, as if the air itself was constantly waiting for something to happen. You can see what she means, if you sniff hard enough.

He was the first thing Bien saw as he came up the escalator of the third floor of Virra Mall. The man was two heads shorter, about a five-foot-three to Bien’s six-foot frame. His extremely short hair was unevenly cut, his dark eyes watchful, darting back and forth even as they focused on Bien.

He sidled up to Bien, a big smile on his pockmarked face. “Boss, ex?” he asked.

DARIO stared out of his bedroom window, studying the mass that congregated at his doorstep below. The dead of Barrio Masigasig had arrived at his house today, dug themselves out of their graves, many of them ancient and rotting, caked with dirt, their faces caved in, chests sunken, limbs falling or long gone.